Sevgul Uludag
caramel_cy@yahoo.com
Tel: 99 966518
Last night a reader calls me since news about the exhumations behind the Nicosia Central Prison in the northern part of our capital has refreshed his memory…
`I don't know if this will be of any use to you` he says, `but I want to share what I know…`
He had been a policeman working in traffic back in 1974 and he had seen the collected bodies of `missing` Greek Cypriots – according to my reader, they were brought and they put them in an empty spot next to the Nicosia Traffic Police – at that time across a flour factory, at the very beginning of Ortakeuy in Nicosia.
`They were around 35-40 or 45-50 bodies` he says…
`We had made various complaints since these bodies had stayed for some days and they had been deteriorating… We had called the Nicosia Turkish Cypriot Municipality and they had come to put something over them, some spray or lime… They were all dressed in dark blue if I remember correctly, I think these were the uniforms of the reservist Greek Cypriots… After some days a person called ……. had come with his shiro and they were put on a truck and taken from there…`
I thank him for this…
Many of our readers from the very beginning, at repeated times had told their memories about how the `missing` Greek Cypriots ended up behind the Nicosia Central Prison, in a military area…
One reader had visited me and we had spoken for hours…
It was him who told me that this area was not only an area where they buried collectively in mass graves, some `missing` Greek Cypriots but it was also an area of executions. That they had brought some Greek Cypriot prisoners of war and had executed in the same area…
Some readers had told me that there had been some wells in the area and some were buried in wells but I could never find out where these wells might have been…
Some readers had come with us to show us the area and we had gone with Okan Oktay, the Coordinator of Exhumations of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee, as well as Xenophon Kallis and Murat Soysal, the officials of the CMP.
Another reader of mine who had been a young Turkish Cypriot soldier in 1974, had told me how they had collected those Greek Cypriots killed in the area of Kaymakli (Omorphita) and had loaded them on garbage trucks that belonged to the Nicosia Turkish Cypriot municipality… There had been a group of Greek Cypriot soldiers who had been inside the church in Kaymakli (Omorphita) – 15 of them or around that number – who had been killed there… They were prisoners of war and they were executed in the church… There had been women in the church as well but they were taken away and sent back to the southern part of our island. According to my reader, the Greek Cypriots killed in the war that they were assigned to `collect` were not just soldiers but there had been a number of civilians as well... They had gone in houses in Omorphita and had collected dead bodies of civilians…
`The bodies were in bad shape and afterwards we all had boils on our skins, those of us who had to collect these bodies and load them on trucks` he had told me…
Apparently others collected other bodies from Trachonas and it is believed that they were eventually buried behind the Nicosia Central Prison in the northern part of our island… Some readers also said they might have been buried around Dikomo…
The area where remains of `missing` have been found is not Trachonas but the industrial area where I work at the premises of YENIDUZEN – the daily newspaper. This area is between Dikomo and Hamit Mandrez… But because the bodies were also collected from the Trachonas area, people have been making a mistake saying that the digging is in Trachonas. There is no digging in Trachonas now but there is also information from there – that while building a military hospital after 1974 in Trachonas, that remains had been found… Some of my readers who had served there, shared information about what they know: That some bones were under the canteen and some bones under the hospital… But this too is a military area and perhaps one day the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee can do excavations there when they get permission… In fact, the very first excavations when they had begun digging had started from this military hospital but with no results… There
has been also readers who shared information concerning Dikomo… Some of these places where my readers have shown, the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee did exhumations and found some remains of some `missing` Greek Cypriots. But there is more work to be done in Dikomo – and again, it depends on when the CMP will get `permission` from the military to dig there as well… But all of this does not stop us from investigating and writing… This is an ongoing process and we will continue to work hard with the help of my readers from both sides of the dividing line in Cyprus.
Another reader contacted me and wrote to me about a possible burial site in Kyrenia…
`There is something that I have been hearing from my parents and always I had in mind to contact you and tell you` he says…
`At the entrance of Kyrenia near the English Cemetery, there is a place called……. (he gives a name) and in the southern part of this area I heard that they had killed a lot of Greek Cypriots in 1974. I was not there but my mother and father used to tell me that in this area there was a terrible stench… I will send you a google map so that you can see what I am talking about…`
He sends me the map as he promises… When I look at the map he has sent me I see that the whole area has been `developing` and has become full of buildings… There is only one place where he describes that is green…
I immediately contact Okan Oktay who is responsible for exhumations in the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee and tell him about this area… When I describe him the place, he says that there has been no digging in that area. I will send the map to him as well as the other officials of the Cyprus Missing Persons' Committee so that they can do investigations in this area to see if in fact there is a burial site where my reader is mentioning…
According to my reader there are also a chain of wells in this area going from north towards the south all the way to the new mosque that they built in Kyrenia…
The area that my reader is mentioning about a possible burial site is close to the Hirondelle junction while entering Kyrenia… There has always been information from my readers that there had been burial sites behind the Hirondelle…
I thank all my readers for their humanitarian and voluntary work with me and those who want to call me either with their names or without their names can do so – my phone number is 99 966518… Any information about our tragic past will help to heal the wounds of our divided country and bring us one more step closer to creating a better future…
4.9.2015
Photo: Archeologists digging behind the prison in Nicosia… Photo: TAK News Agency.
(*) Article published in the POLITIS newspaper on the 27th of September 2015, Sunday.
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